Shared Meanings!!

Most of us are familiar with the various meaning of symbols and words in different cultures when they've resulted in a marketing/economic disaster.

For example, Nova as the name for a car model when 'no va' means 'no go'.

Or the baby pictured on baby food that is interpreted in cultures that display the product on a label that there is a cooked baby inside.

However, we don't usually hear of mis-interpreted symbols that are deadly.

Manufacturers of poisonous products often put a skull on the label and assume this is a universally understood warning symbol for danger and death

However, in many indigenous religions the skull is tied to the concept of spiritual blessings.

So I suppose the closest translation of a skull on a liquid insecticide/pesticide would be that this is 'holy water'.

So we shouldn't be surprised at the high levels of poisonings and cancer in areas where illiterate indigenous peoples are laboring at low wages in commercial fields and using/exposed to pesticides.

This is another example of 'talking past each other' via symbols that we should be sharing in our work and not just the 'nova' story.

I'd love to hear of other symbols that do not have a shared meaning across cultures, especially those that might prove dangerous to the 'reader'.